Posts Tagged ‘search warrant’

My daughter recently recorded an episode of “COPS” that was filmed in Jacksonville. The whole family sat down together to watch just for fun. To my surprise, I soon realized that one of my cases was featured on this episode!

It was a re-run of an old show that originally aired at least eight years ago. The case was one of those that I’ll never forget. And since “COPS” doesn’t tell the whole story, I can reveal how it ended favorably for my client.

The officers went to an apartment to serve a search warrant. Prior to the execution of the warrant, there was some discussion at the police station indicating confusion over the address at which the warrant was to be served. On the show, you see the officers use a battering ram to burst into the apartment (without the constitutionally-required knock and announce, but that’s a story for another day) and arrest the people inside.

Here’s what happened off-camera. The sworn affidavit for the search warrant that the officers presented to the judge alleged that a confidential informant had bought drugs at a specific address, but when I deposed the officer who prepared the affidavit, he testified that he had mistakenly written the wrong address on the affidavit.

I filed a motion asking the court to force the State to reveal the identity of the confidential informant so that I could question him regarding where he bought the drugs. If the address alleged on the affidavit for the warrant was in fact not the one where he bought the drugs, then the warrant would be invalid. The judge agreed that these unusual circumstances justified the extraordinary remedy of compelling the State to reveal the identity of the CI; otherwise, my client’s Fifth Amendment right to cross examine the witnesses against him would be denied.

The State chose to drop the charges rather than reveal the identity of its confidential informant.